A Quote by James Wolk

I just enjoyed bar mitzvahs as a kid, and there was this company in the Detroit area where I grew up, and I think they recruited me as a party dancer - you know, like, you dance around and pass out glow sticks. I quickly rose in the ranks and, within a year, became an emcee, which was kind of unheard of.
You can find old Jewish newspapers from Detroit that have my promotional ad in them. It was a totally insane time in my life. Paul Rudd was also a bar mitzvah emcee, you know? It was like being a local rock star in Detroit.
I was an emcee for bar mitzvahs from age sixteen to twenty-one.
Only one party sticks out in my mind as a kid. It was the best party ever. I was 5 years old, and my mom dressed me up in a church dress and stockings to go to the party and park.
I don't even think of myself as a quote, unquote star - that's really douchey. I think of myself as just like . . . a dance commander. You have to have dance parties all day and night, and you always have to be excited about having a dance party. You have to have a dance party in Milan one day, and then wake up and have a dance party at, like, four in the morning on national television in L.A. the next day. The hours are insane.
Dance is a universal language, and whether you know how to dance or grew up training in dance, you have a respect for people who love to dance, and it's also visually very entertaining to watch a great dancer.
I was a bar-back, which is the person who cleans the bathrooms at the end of the night in the bar, and a cook. I had kind of given up. I was into backing other people up. Music was something I just did on the side and I don't think I had the energy to pimp myself out, like call people up and ask them to book me to play.
Well, I took ballet for many, many years, so my whole childhood really revolved around dance class. I grew up around dance; my mother was a dancer.
I grew up listening to my dad, a miner who rose through the ranks to be the mine superintendent in Coalwood, W.V. , yelling orders into his black company phone. He wanted to get coal out of the ground and into coal cars and on its way to steel mills.
All of my friends are really good dancers, which was initially why I never danced - we'd go out and they would kill it and I'd be like, "Yeah, I'm just gonna sit at the bar." I broke my foot, and I couldn't run for a year, but I realized I could kind of dance. It reminded me how amazing dance is; it's so in tune with music - it is music. It's a physical expression of whatever music is. On stage, you're interacting with things - physical things. So I've really started to like and notice the way people move with music.
Everything, I just wanted to be like my father. And, as I grew within the music, I kind of became myself which was even more like my father, only without me trying though.
Concert dance is the hardest kind of dance. We tour constantly, around the world, year in and year out. It just doesn't work for everybody. It's the lifestyle, it's the stamina, it's the love, it's the dedication, it's the commitment, it's all those words.
When I played Darth Maul, it sort of came from inside. I'm not saying it was natural, but I really enjoyed it, and I think I was tapping into my childhood, growing up with 'Star Wars.' And I grew up with G.I. Joe as well. Same as 'Thundercats' and 'Transformers' and 'He-Man.' And so I think it was the inner kid in me just came out.
I'm not a trained dancer, but I grew up in a culture that revolves around dance.
I grew up in the South where they are very, very passionate about sports, and I was the artsy kid who didn't know much about it. I found I kind of enjoyed the social aspect, and I enjoyed the tailgating. I went for the free food and the experience. But to this day, I'm still learning. You're not going to see me watching it by myself, but if there are nachos involved, I'm there.
When I was 16, my friends and I were all starting to think about what we were going to do with our lives, and I started picturing myself majoring in dance at college traveling around with a contemporary dance company, and it didn't excite me as I thought it would all those years. I was just thinking about the things that I loved most about dance, which was entertaining and telling a story, and that's when I kind of opened my eyes again to acting.
An emcee is a Master of Ceremonies. If you're an emcee, and I am an emcee... I rhyme, you know what I mean? I do things for my fans that still appreciate me, let them know what's coming.
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